"Abandoned." Adrift. Enduring.

Weary Iraqi refugees describe how life in Chicago and America has left them with little hope

A safe home. A good job. Stability for their children after years on the run from death threats and the mayhem of war -- that is what the Iraqi refugees envisioned when told they were coming to America.

Instead, one family is assigned an apartment on Chicago's North Side so full of cockroaches and filth they couldn't stay the night.

A veterinarian from southern Iraq relies on relatives in Karbala to pay his rent in Chicago, upending the traditional immigrant experience.

An Iraqi mother of three, unable to pay her rent with her husband still in the Middle East, finds little help warding off the predatory advances of male acquaintances offering assistance.

"This is what they brought us when they invaded our country?" cried Wafaa Falah, 40, a Baghdad refugee handed food stamps and a bus pass when she arrived at her new apartment in West Rogers Park. "They don't care about us. They brought us here and abandoned us."

The number of Iraqi refugees in Illinois doubled to 2,400 this year, mirroring a sharp increase in asylum for Iraqis across the nation. An additional 21,000 are in the pipeline to the U.S., more than all previous arrivals since 2003.

As the numbers grow, so do concerns about the shortcomings of a refugee system that was set up in 1980 to welcome Vietnamese and Cambodians but that aid groups and government officials say needs an overhaul.

Following two severely critical studies of how Iraqis fare across the U.S., the Obama administration has vowed to review the entire refugee resettlement process. Officials say the White House soon will seek to strengthen support for refugees and their new communities.

Among the problems cited in studies by Georgetown University Law School and the International Rescue Committee are paltry resettlement funds that quickly evaporate, dim job prospects, mounting loan debts, repeat eviction notices, a dearth of funds for mental health counseling, and even the prospect of homelessness."I'm ashamed. I feel like I'm selling a lie," said Greg Wangerin, executive director of Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, among several Chicago nonprofit organizations that help refugees.

Though rooted in war, the problems facing the refugees also trace back to local, national and international bureaucracies.

Fleeing violence, roughly 2 million Iraqis have flooded neighboring countries such as Syria and Jordan. For those who cannot return home safely, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees finds new countries willing to take in those refugees who pass security checks and health exams.

Increasingly, that destination is the U.S., where the State Department now accepts three-quarters of them. Iraqis are a quarter of all refugees arriving in the United States.

Once in the U.S., they are placed by agencies such as Wangerin's. But their numbers have outstripped the capacity of the agencies to adequately house and help them, especially with the sour economy. The resettlement experience can be tough for Iraqis, many of whom were professionals with middle-class dreams who grapple with psychological barriers to starting from scratch.

Most of the Iraqis say they had no idea they would end up in the U.S., a country many of them blame for the chaos that followed the 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. Many of them say it never would have been their first choice.

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Smells of home and roach spray

Along the dingy hallways of a Rogers Park apartment building, the smells of fish soup, curry and other ethnic cuisine merge with the tinny scent of roach spray binding four floors of immigrants from around the world.

It was move-in day for Sattar Naama, a onetime mechanic who escaped Iraq to Lebanon in 2008 ahead of militants who killed a younger brother, who was an Iraqi soldier, and a sister who was with him. Naama and his wife arrived in Chicago in July.Originally settled in Des Plaines by Heartland Alliance, the couple moved this month to Rogers Park when layoffs at a cosmetics factory in Waukegan ended an assembly line job for Naama after 10 days.

What greeted them were roaches marching across their new apartment and a kitchen sink stained black. Such conditions illustrate one of the findings in the recent Georgetown University report on Iraqi refugees: Because of "insufficient" cash assistance, many of them land squarely into impoverished settings.

The couple slept that night in the home of another Iraqi family, while a case worker attended to the problem.

"I imagined the situation here would be very good," said Naama. "I thought it was going to be white. But it is black."

The math for refugees is unforgiving. In Chicago, the average cost for rent, a security deposit, food and rudimentary furniture is $1,550, according to state estimates. The State Department provides a one-time $425 grant per adult refugee.